


Reykjavik

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 16:06:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8673799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: Detente, post-Civil War style.





	

She saw the place almost immediately after she got across the overpass over the Van Wyck. The instructions had said it was near a subway stop and it was, but it was a weekend and there was no local eastbound service to said stop, so she'd had to walk from the nearest express station. Peter had been pretty good with the adjusted directions, including the easiest way to get across the overpass without getting killed by the cars turning on to the expressway without so much as signaling, let alone slowing down. He'd given her that _look_ when she'd admitted that Queens was a mystery to her. 

"But it's the only borough where the street addresses give you the intersections!" he'd spluttered. "Manhattan needs algebra to do that and good luck anywhere else!"

Be that as it may, there was no confusing Queens's Broadway for Manhattan's and she only knew her way around the latter. 

The rendezvous looked like a typical New York diner from across the street, as Peter had said it would, but only from the outside. Inside, the Woodside Cafe was straight out of the Himalayas, with tapestries on the wall and the television playing a Nepali channel and a menu that had Newari specialties instead of pancakes or tuna melts on rye. 

Steve and Sam were sitting at the far end from the entrance, ostensibly looking at menus but their eyes met hers the moment she'd come through the door. 

"Barnes providing overwatch?" she asked with false lightness as she took the seat next to Sam. 

She didn't know where Steve's gang was holed up these days or who was with them. Clint was back home, for the most part at least, but he'd pointedly refused to answer any questions when she'd asked on her last visit. She was still welcome in the Barton home and she and Clint had more or less come to terms with what had happened and forgiven each other for their trespasses, but forgiving wasn't forgetting and it wasn't surrender, either. Clint knew she'd helped Steve and Barnes escape, but he still didn't trust the people she was working for even as he trusted her. And after how pear-shaped everything had already gotten, she knew better than to challenge that. 

"Is the kid?" Sam asked in a less buoyant tone. 

Natasha smiled to cover up the tiny pinprick of hurt at the accusation under the banter. Once upon a time, she and Sam had been collaborators in the Art of Steve Management and well on the way to friendship, but if Clint had forgiven her and Steve had never been angry in the first place, Sam... Sam was maybe the grudge-bearing type. And it bothered her more than she felt it should. Laura had told her that was good, that caring about someone's good opinion meant something positive, but right now it was just frustrating because she didn't consider herself a villain just because her pragmatism was less gentle than Sam's. 

"The kid is a couple of stops east on the F train studying for his SATs," she replied with a shrug. The shrug had been for Steve, who'd read all of the subtext as text and she needed to assure him that this wasn't going to be a problem. "He's not allowed to come out to play until he can pass Tony's pop quiz." 

Which was actually true -- FRIDAY had practice exams on file and Peter had to complete one before he could do anything Avengers-related. The argument that had resulted from that unilaterally-instituted policy had been special, to say the least. 

"It's just us," Steve said in a tone that was good-natured but clearly stated that the sniping part of the program was over. "How's Rhodey doing?" 

"Rhodey is doing," she replied with another shrug, this one the sort of helplessness that went with not being able to do anything. Rhodey was wiping himself out in PT every day, his ability to cope with how much he now needed Tony's tech to do waxing and waning. "Most days he's okay enough to pretend he's okay."

A waitress came over and brought water and another menu.

"Wanda's in school," Steve said once it was just them again, smiling at Natasha's surprised reaction. "She wanted us to tell you that. Also that you didn't win anything, which I am going to assume you understand because I don't." 

Once upon a time, Natasha had spent the better part of a year trying to get Wanda to take a class at the SUNY campus near the Avengers' headquarters, to no avail. Wanda's reasons had changed with the seasons, but Natasha's had remained the same: to get Wanda to _do_ something to give herself the control over her life she'd felt she'd lost -- or maybe never had. If Natasha had any regrets about how things had gone down during the Great Schism, they were to do with Wanda. She didn't disagree with Tony's strategy when it came to dealing with Wanda, both after Lagos and after the airport fight, but his tactics had been terrible to the point of being counterproductive. They'd driven Wanda into insurgency when it would have been possible to keep her out of things entirely. They'd betrayed her trust and then, after her capture, they'd betrayed their own fear of her by collaring and tying her up like a rabid animal. The last part hadn't been entirely their own doing, but Natasha had been too desperate to save the political situation to challenge Ross's people and Tony had been too angry to care about anyone's pain but his own and they'd sacrificed Wanda in the process. 

Tony's regret had come and gone, overwhelmed by fresh grief and concern for Rhodey and if he was overcompensating a bit by making Peter answer SAT questions before reactivating his Avengers ID card, nobody was going to say anything. (Except for Peter's griping about already having an Aunt May.) But Natasha had felt it keenly and kept it sharp like a shiv because pain was the feeling she understood best. She knew Clint and Laura were in regular contact with Wanda and that Wanda skyped with the kids once in a while. And she knew that there was a new picture in a frame that sat on the mantle between the one of Laura's brother's kids and the one of Nate trying to eat a grapefruit whole that got put away whenever Natasha visited because whatever else it showed, it gave away enough of Wanda's location for it to matter. Clint made no bones about hiding it, didn't try to re-arrange the other frames to cover up the gap, and Natasha never said anything because she knew why. 

Wanda telling Steve to update Natasha was a show of forgiveness. One she was grateful for more than she thought she would be. 

"Tell Wanda I'm proud of her," Natasha said. "And I hope she's enjoying it."

Lunch was soybeans and fried fish and the Nepali version of pizza and momos and something that turned out to be blood sausage that Steve ate by himself quite happily. There was butter tea and oblique conversation about where things sat with Ross (either and both) and with the UN and Natasha could offer up very few positives on that score. Steve and Sam and Wanda were still technically fugitives, but not ones anyone was too interested in prosecuting because of the whole habeas corpus business on The Raft. Which was also why Clint and Scott Lang were free to go about their business. Barnes, on the other hand, was a more complicated problem. He had been cleared of the UN bombing, but there was no consensus on whether James Barnes should be liable for the Winter Soldier's crimes and and Natasha couldn't even promise Steve that Tony would not make things worse, let alone that he would actually help. She knew Rhodey was working on that, but Tony was still essentially a walking open wound and magnanimity was not yet back in his toolkit. 

"Don't worry about Bucky," Steve assured her. "He's safe where he is."

The words were meant to comfort, or at least assuage, but the tone did nothing of the sort and Natasha looked over at Sam because she _knew_ that tone. It was the one that said that Steve was in pain but determined to work through it. Which she translated into Barnes being not only beyond where Tony or any government could get him, but also beyond Steve's grasp as well. Sam's expression confirmed it and Natasha sighed, hopefully just to herself. Steve had given up his entire life for Barnes and he didn't even get that. 

"I'll be fine," Steve told her because of course he'd registered it. "Sam is determined to keep me occupied." 

"Sam is determined to make the most of his nomad status and rack up as many passport stamps on his fake papers as he can while he's flying around on HYDRA's dime," Sam not-really corrected. Natasha (and Tony) already knew that Steve was funding his activities out of monies 'reclaimed' from HYDRA; every base worth raiding had its own hard currency stash -- coins, bearer bonds, bullion, jewels, whatever else could be traded without a trace if needed. Of course Steve's personal accounts had been frozen when he'd gone on the lam, but there were 'in case of emergency, break glass' accounts that Natasha knew Steve still had access to and hadn't touched. Which left either a sponsor or another revenue stream and the evidence, in the form of bad guys on law enforcement doorsteps and smoldering ruins where weapons caches had been, pointed to the latter. 

"Let me know if you need some recommendations," she said, since this clearly was not a discussion that was going anywhere. Steve was the only person less interested than herself in talking about their feelings. 

They parted outside the restaurant, wry grins and Natasha promising in all seriousness that she had zero interest in surveilling them around Queens and was going straight back to the subway. "I'd tell you to stay out of trouble, but who would I be fooling?" she said as she accepted Steve's hug. Sam rolled his eyes and hugged her, too, his grudge not that kind of prickly. 

"So how was Reykjavik?" Tony asked as she entered the penthouse an hour later. Tony and Rhodey were on the couch playing some kind of robot war video game. 

"It wasn't _that_ far east," she replied, unzipping her jacket. 

Tony sighed loudly. "This is what I mean, Rhodey. You have to stick around because there is nobody else who will get my Cold War references. It's like doing dinner theater in a nursing home." 

Rhodey leaned back on the couch so he could see Natasha from behind Tony. "Everyone's okay?" 

Because this was how it went. Nobody hated each other, nobody wished anyone ill, nobody wanted to apologize, nobody wanted to admit they were wrong. It was just pride and principle and pain and both sides understood that this was temporary not because the other side would give in, but because something would come along that would require reconciliation if they were going to survive it. 

"Everyone will do."

**Author's Note:**

> [This was also posted to Tumblr if you'd like to like or reblog there.](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/153741454204/cacw-drabble-reykjavik)


End file.
